Planning and Assessment Council

The Planning and Assessment Council (PAC), created in April 2011, reviews assessment processes at The Cooper Union and aids The Office of the President and the Chief Academic Officer to monitor the effectiveness of strategic planning efforts. Its mission is to identify and use a systematic set of planning and assessment guidelines and metrics to strengthen strategic planning and decision making.

Some of its key functions are:

To review a campus-wide assessment plan that conforms to the expected assessment standards, namely that activities are “useful, cost-effective, reasonably accurate and truthful, carefully planned, and organized, systematic and sustained.”

To identify standardized surveys that produce helpful comparative data, to explore the systematic use of standard instruments, and to recommend further types of external benchmarking.

To monitor accountability for assessment activities and to produce a brief annual interpretative review that accompanies “scorecards” or dashboard reports of key performance indicators on the strategic plan. (To help in the identification of key performance indicators)

To create an annual assessment summary of the reports from each academic unit identifying particular aspects of a faculty's assessment performance.

To recommend the adoption of new technologies or software to lower the overhead costs of assessment and accreditation efforts.

Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.